A fallen woman shares her secrets

From the gritty, hardscrabble streets of early 19th-century Manhattan, to the brazen brothels and barrooms of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, readers will find author Phillip Margulies’ rollicking debut novel Belle Cora as exquisitely seductive as its enigmatic heroine. Disguised as a memoir, Belle Cora is actually an ornately constructed family saga tucked within a framework of...